Now, nobody ever goes into someone's house and says "Holy mackrel! You have the greatest toilet!" But they do come into your house and say "Dude, your toilet sucks." Which is the state that my toilet was in. Years of stop-gap patching had failed and the water was constantly running, old non-standard parts were driving me nuts and, it was pink. It was time to replace the thing. The Home Depot project book listed it as "easy" and that it would take about 1.5 hours to put a new one in.

First the water has to be turned off -- my valve had broken which made this difficult. I had to find another valve in the basement. Little did I know that when I shut it off, it made water start squriting out under the kitchen sink. oops. it's sort of like a 3 stooges routine ... i'd figure that out later. So, water turned off, first thing to do was disconnect and replace the defective valve. Then drain the toilet tank, sponge it out, and remove it. This was a lot easier than I expected.

The toilet bowl comes up pretty easily too. Its held in place by two bolts. Once it came off I realized how dreadfully simple a toilet actually is. It's basically nothing more than a water trap over a hole in the floor.

The new bowl goes down and is sealed to the drain with a ring of wax called ... a "wax seal". I then attached the tank and turned the water on.

And water promptly started squirting from the guts of the toilet..... Some minor adjustments ....

And voila. New toilet that doesn't leak. Total time: 2 hours. This included removal of the old toilet, a trip to the hardware store, and goofing off to read my email a couple times.